Stante, Maria (2010) The Alzheimer’s Amyloid precursor protein APP and the adaptor protein Fe65: their role in the cellular response to DNA damage. [Tesi di dottorato] (Unpublished)

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Fe65 interacts with the cytosolic domain of the Alzheimer’s amyloid precursor protein (APP). The functions of the Fe65 and of the Fe65/APP complex are still unknown. To address this point we generated Fe65 knock out mice. These mice do not show any obvious phenotype, however, when fibroblasts (MEFs), isolated form Fe65 KO embryos, were exposed to low doses of DNA damaging agents, such as etoposide or H2O2, an increased sensitivity to genotoxic stress, compared to wild type animals, clearly emerged. Accordingly, brain extracts from Fe65 KO mice, exposed to non-lethal doses of ionizing radiations, showed high levels of γ-H2AX and p53, thus demonstrating a higher sensitivity to X-rays than wild type mice. Nuclear Fe65 is necessary to rescue the observed phenotype and, few minutes after the exposure of MEFs to DNA damaging agents, Fe65 undergoes phosphorylation in the nucleus. With a similar timing, the proteolytic processing of APP is rapidly affected by the genotoxic stress: in fact, the cleavage of the APP C-terminal fragments by γ-secretase is induced soon after the exposure of cells to etoposide, in a Fe65-dependent manner. These results demonstrate that Fe65 plays an essential role in the response of the cells to DNA damage. Moreover we found that Fe65 is a chromatin bound protein that determines the degree of chromatin condensation both in basal and under genotoxic stress conditions. Fe65 association with chromatin is required during DNA damage repair. Indeed a known partner of Fe65 is the histone acetyltransferase Tip60. Considering the crucial role of Tip60 in DNA repair, we explored the hypothesis that the phenotype of Fe65 null cells was dependent on its interaction with Tip60. We demonstrated that Fe65 knockdown impaired recruitment of Tip60-TRRAP complex to DNA double strand breaks and decreased histone H4 acetylation. Accordingly, the efficiency of DNA repair was decreased upon Fe65 suppression. To explore whether APP has a role in this mechanism, we analyzed a Fe65 mutant unable to bind to APP. This mutant failed to rescue the phenotypes of Fe65 null cells; furthermore, APP/APLP2 suppression results in the impairment of recruitment of Tip60-TRRAP complex to DNA double strand breaks, decreased histone H4 acetylation and repair efficiency. On these bases, we propose that Fe65 and its interaction with APP play an important role in the response to DNA damage by assisting the recruitment of Tip60-TRRAP to DNA damage sites.

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